Paul French is the author of a number of books on China's history, development, and society, including most recently Midnight In Peking. Sadly, "dragon ladies" are an all-too-familiar trope in ...

Back in the late '90s and early 2000s, her portrayal of Ling Woo in Ally McBeal was also called out for playing into the dragon lady trope. 20th Century Fox / Courtesy Everett Collection.

In light of an ongoing investigation that the wife of a Communist Party official murdered a British businessman, Foreign Policy's Paul French takes an in-depth look at "Dragon Ladies" and some of ...